3D Print Your Own Analog Camera

3D printers are being used to print a huge variety of objects, including customized personal electronics, a prototype hybrid car, and eventually, tools for astronauts. Now, a recently graduated design student has used a 3D printer to make an open-source working 35 mm analog camera, and so can you -- he's posted all the files and instructions online. You'll have to supply tools and the lens.

Leo Marius designed and built the Open Reflex camera on a MakerBot Replicator 2X 3D printer as part of his graduation project in design at the Saint-Ettiene School of Art and Design in France. Files are available on Thingiverse and a wiki so users can contribute their design tweaks. Instructions and files are both available on Instructables.

Marius has made source files available under the terms of a Creative Commons By-Sa-style license, which allows users to modify the files to add features or make improvements. He's also used tools and items he says are easily available "in the nearest fablab."

Click on the photo below to check out the Open Reflex camera.

A recently graduated design student has used a 3D printer to make an open-source working 35 mm analog camera. (Source: Leo Marius)

The step-by-step instructions given at Instructables and on Marius' Open Reflex wiki are very clear and appear to be complete, including tools and supplies needed, as well as a few tips. The wiki, where he gives an ongoing work-in-progress status, says he's compiling an illustrated set of step-by-step instructions for printing and assembling the camera that will be available in a few weeks. To build your own Open Reflex camera, you'll need several tools, including a RepRap-type 3D printer that uses ABS plastic, a CNC cutting tool, and about 25 Euros worth of supplies.

The camera's design includes a finger-activated mechanical shutter with a fixed 1/60s exposure, and a mirror viewfinder. It can accept any lens with its custom mount ring. Open Reflex has been designed so it can be printed in a modular fashion, making builds and modifications easier: the film receiver, shutter, and viewfinder are separate modules that snap together. Each module consists of several parts, and all parts can be printed without the need for support material.

What we've just told you is all the good news. The not-so-good news is how long it takes to print and assemble the camera, and how difficult it is, at least for some, to take a single picture.

Marius says that printing all the pieces requires about 15 hours and assembly can be done in about one hour. That sounds grueling to me, at least all the printing. His instructions also include details for taking a picture, which requires eight separate steps. For those used to point-and-shoot cameras, those eight steps may be daunting or irritating. But for those of us who (gasp) still use analog cameras, it's business as usual.

Marius says if there's enough interest, he may crowdsource funds to build a few and sell them for around 50 Euros each. He's also working on an updated version of the camera design.

Ann, I have never come across a reference to a film camera as an "analog" camera. In the crash testing business there are both "pure analog" digital electronic cameras and "pure digital" digital cameras. Of course these are very application specific devices with capture rates that sometimes exceed a thousand frames per second. But the very most impressive frame rates are on the cameras used to record the military testing of projectiles hitting armer testing.

William, "analog camera" is the designer's own descriptive term, but I've seen it used interchangeably with "film camera" to distinguish this type from digital cameras. Funny, we all knew what they were before, and right after, the digital versions came along.

The title of the writup is a bit confusing, since I was thinking that an analog camera would be an analog electronic camera, instead of a film camera. Big difference there. Of course, this may have been mentioned already, but I did not read through all 5 pages of comments just yet. I still have some truly analog cameras, vidicon types that are completely analog and produce NTSC composite video. The reason I keep them is the very high resolution of those lenses, which are able to resolve fence wires at 100 feet quite well. Of course, there are some very good pure digital cameras that will do much better than that, but they cost a whole lot more than I am willing to spend o toys such as these.

So "print your own film camera" would have provided a much more accurate description of what the article actually is.

And 15 hourse to print and one whole hour is not bad at all, although it certainly would be a huge challenge for somebody with a 3 second attention span.

Ann: It's NOT too important to me anymore, since I mostly shoot digital now, but when I went to that Buddhist Temple a while back, I just had a hankering to grab some film from the freezer. So, it's NOT a big deal. I have used a lab in Gainesville for years for my B&W film. They have partially converted their process. They develop the film w/ the classic wet process, then scan the negatives using very high reolution scanning equipment and print the negatives w/ digital printers. Last year I sent them a quantity of B&W negatives that were approx 70 years old. They came back absolutely GREAT! Even some minor scratches were removed.

Years ago my local CVS store was staffed by two very knowledgeable technicians in the photo section. Because I brought in a fair amount of film for developing, they would go the "extra mile" for me, and make prints which were color-adjusted where necessary. Needless to say, that was a great relationship, and all at the regular store prices. ALAS!...... that is no more! CVS has abandoned MOST wet processing, and the stores which still have the old NORITSU machines will be discontinuing that service within the next 6 months.

OLD_CURMUDGEON, it did sound like you were saying film development wasn't available much anywhere. It certainly was cheap for a long time, such as at drugstore chains. Of course, good pro labs have always cost more--and are usually worth it. The Walgreens corporate online ad is here: http://photo.walgreens.com/walgreens/pdpsdpitems/type=film_processing My local store still does this--I wonder why yours doesn't.

far911, I'm not sure I understand your question. The term "3D printing" has been around for quite awhile. Perhaps you mean the "it's like magic" appeal to people who don't understand the technology or don't realize how far it's come, and therefore think these claims are impossible. Or did you mean something else?

Ann: I wasn't suggesting that wet-processing is no longer available. What I've learned is that it is MOSTLY not available on the local level at a competitive price. I have been involoved in photography for the better part of 60+ years, having started with enlarging my father's images with his home-made enlarger in the basement of our house as a child. My point was and still is, is that it is not convenient for a person now to get the processing done AND at a price which makes it worthwhile, UNLESS you're a professional photographer & can absorb the costs. Typically, a 24-exposure roll for processing & 1 set of prints (4x6, matte) was approx. $6. Now, it's double that @ these specialty outlets. In the rear pages of SHUTTERBUG magazine, for example, there are several advertisements for film processing services, but this entails sending the exposed film to their facility, and waiting.

By the way, the WALGREENS at the entrance to our subdivision informed me that they do not develop film anymore. They ONLY have machinery for digital file processing to prints.

Ann I believe the skepticism in the air lies around the word 'printing'. Where we're accustomed to using words like moulding, manufacturing, dyeing etc., printing seems like an underwhelming word whereas its purpose is on par with those aforementioned words. What do you think?

The reason I mentioned large format such as a hasselblad is the much higher quality of the image over what you get in the far more common 35mm format. Technically if you can print a 35mm you can print any format size (well within reason anyway).

Here's the reason for printing one. You can go to pawnshops or second hand store or camera shops and pick up what used to be top of the line Canon or Nikon for lunch money amounts. Nothing wrong with a lot of them just not digital. However you cannot find a hasselblad as they are still for the most part in use. The new 50mp digital images are close but still not up to the same quality in a few areas so these cameras keep on working for the pro's. The other part of this is that a low end hassleblad setup would cost about the same as a nice new shiny Mercedes. The top end would be about the same as a nice new shiny Ferrari. That makes it worth doing unlike a 35mm size.

Thanks for that description, KingDWS :) The internals are, indeed, what counts here. I don't see offhand why one couldn't figure out how to print a Hasselblad, too. After all, with other types of printers that do metals, NASA is printing complex rocket engine parts.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

Kaspersky Labs indicated at its February meeting that cyber attacks are far more sophisticated than previous thought. It turns out even air-gapping (disconnecting computers from the Internet to protect against cyber intrusion) isn’t a foolproof way to avoid getting hacked. And Kaspersky implied the NSA is the smartest attacker.

Focus on Fundamentals consists of 45-minute on-line classes that cover a host of technologies. You learn without leaving the comfort of your desk. All classes are taught by subject-matter experts and all are archived. So if you can't attend live, attend at your convenience.